People are creeped out by ghosts and spirits. I am no different. I think that the only horror movie I’ve watched in the last 5 years is Conjuring.

I believe that there are spirits in this world. If I said I’ve seen and felt them. Would you believe me? Saying that, these are things that I hope that I will never ever experience again.

Actually you do not need to worry, unless you are one of the below.

You are always tired. Once you feel vulnerable, you fear.

You have a lot of secrets, you will fear them being exposed.

You have a lot of desires and gains, you worry that they will be taken away.

Your surrounding is always cluttered, as it brings you only poor energy.

You do bad things, your conscious is not clear, you betray relationships behind the back of your friends and families. You gained wealth through unscrupulous ways. In another words, you take things that, deep in your heart, you know that they do not belong to you.

Look at the people you mix with. Are you mixing with people who have clear conscious? Who are charitable? Honest, righteous, and sincere?

Always remember, as long as you do good, avoid bad actions and thoughts, and have a conscious heart, you don’t have anything to worry. The Gods in the heaven protect people like these. And beings who harms people will avoid harming those who are protected by Gods.

Buddhism teaches us to let go off desires. Having no desires is the ultimate state of, if I am allowed to say, happiness.

Ever wondered isn’t having desires to have no desires, a contradiction itself?

Does that mean that we will never achieve a state of no desires?

We must understand this principle. Achieving a state of no desires is extremely difficult. The difficulty could be as much as trying to leave our universe.

In this realm, only the Buddhas have achieved this state. Not even the great Boddhisattvas have achieved a state of no desires.

If even the Boddhisattvas have desires, does that mean that there is no chance that we will ever get to a state of no desire?

How can I ever dare to even attempt to answer such a question?

Nobody said achieving what the Buddhas achieved is easy. I would think that the key is not to think of whether we can achieve no desires or not. The key is to practise Buddhism wholeheartedly. Practise mindfulness. Smile, and flow along with wherever the universe guides you.

Although I may never know how the state of no desires really feels, I do know something. That is that having lots of desires will bring lots of suffering.

Have your mum always tell you to sit in the front of the classroom? Maybe next time, you should listen to her.

When we sit in the front, we reduce the distractions around us. When we are in the first row, we are only able to see the projector and hear the lecturer’s voice in the front. This automatically increases our focus on the tutorials being presented.

On top of that, we restrain ourselves from sleeping, playing with our phones, and talking. This is because, we are conscious to the fact that our lecturer and the classmates behind us could be observing our actions. This could lead us to portray a better behavior.

Since you have nothing to do beside focusing on the tutorial, you may even start to take down notes diligently. We, humans, tend to have the urge to find something to do, when we don’t have anything to do.

Next time when you sit in the front, turn around and look at your fellow classmates sitting at the back. You may see half of them busy “taking down notes” on their laptops. Scrolling on their phones. Trying to stay awake.

When we sit at the back, our field of view becomes wider. We starts to observe what our classmates are doing. You may start to stare at the birds outside of your window. You may start to stare aimlessly at the clock, the light, the fan. The projector screen became smaller. And when you have a harder time seeing what is on the screen, you stop paying attention. You may start to use your phone because you became uninterested with the tutorials and you feel that nobody is looking at you.

So if you are serious about getting good grades, start to sit in the front row. You’ll be amazed by how your learning becomes effortless.